Life in France seen through the round window of a straw-built grand design.

Willkommen Bienvenue Welcome

Welcome, gentle readers.

This is an everyday tale of regular folk, who moved from Sheffield to the deepest Corrèze in France Profonde and thence to the rather more cosmopolitan Lot in search of something… different. We certainly found it.

The Lot is an area of outstanding natural beauty. Reputedly, a famous TV globetrotter was asked where, of all the places in the world he had visited, he might return to. He answered, ‘The Lot’.

Fans of Channel 4’s Grand Designs will know that we built a somewhat quirky straw bale house-with-a-view here in the Lot, not far from the celebrated Dordogne river. You can read all about it in my book, Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow, or watch the re-runs of the programme on More 4, or view it on You Tube.

After a break in the proceedings to write a book or two, this blog now takes the form of an everyday journal. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't (but the art school dance goes on forever). I hope it will give you an entertaining insight into what it's like to live in a foreign country; what it's like in the slow lane as an ex-pat Brit in deepest France.

I shall undertake to update this once or twice a week, unless absent on leave. Comments always welcomed, by the way, but I do tend to forget what buttons to click in order to answer them.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Homecoming Queen

‘No, don’t you worry. You’ve got to work tomorrow. I’ll
go and get her.’

It might sound like a sacrifice to offer to go out late
on a Friday evening, but when it’s your child who’s getting in off the train
from Paris Austerlitz, there’s nothing on BBC4 but a documentary about easy
listening, and there’s a chance to drive your wife’s Noddy car with its
super-smooth gearbox and in-car sensaround stereo – well, it’s no big
deal really and such a ‘selfless gesture’ notches up a stack of Brownie points.

It was pouring with rain by the time I left. After the
absurd 35-degree read-out I witnessed on the digital display of the pharmacy in
Brive on Wednesday, the temperature had dropped by well over 20 degrees. That
morning, while there was still but a tentative drizzle, I’d managed to bring in
another boot-load of wood from the chateau, my caretaker’s domain, for our
future needs. I like to keep a good two winters hence in the credit column of
our fuel stock. Just in case anarchy breaks out and there’s a frantic battle
for resources.

'Night train! Carry me home...'

It’s about half an hour’s drive from here to the station
at Brive. There’s just enough time to enact a little mental drama. Dwelling on
the occasions when I would arrive home from college, I wondered how my parents
anticipated my return. With pleasure or with the kind of dread that used to
temper my journeys home? The trouble with studying something light and
pleasurable like English literature was that term-time was too much fun and I
resented anything that curtailed it. Mixing uniquely with people who thought
they were terribly clever gave me a new perspective on whatever it was that my
parents taught me. What did they know? Doodly-squat. It was always only a
matter of time before a resentful know-it-all was going to clash with
philistine parents who lived in ignorance on Planet Mundane.

The Daughter, poor kid, hasn’t had a hedonistic time of
it in the capital. However, she’s been discovering where her true creative
talents lie and adjusting to life away from the comforts of home. She’s much
stronger and more resourceful than when she was initially snatched from her
nest, but not yet so adult and so independent that she can’t still yearn for
the old familiar way. We’d been bombarded from the train by texts informing us
how much she was looking forward to seeing us, so my only slight concern was
that I wouldn’t get to the station on time and thus transform reunion into the
kind of anticlimax that always characterised my own dutiful filial visits.

The municipal elders of Brive are always concocting new
ways to waste the money our annual taxe foncière bequeaths them. They’ve
excavated the central church not once but twice in search of the kind of
archaeological remains that interest no one but the most ardent academics. They’ve
dug up every road imaginable in the name of flood defences that would cope with
a tsunami. And they’ve created the kind of network of showpiece roundabouts
that would scoop the Town-Planning Jury’s médaille d’or. Now they’re
messing about with the station. It was chaos. My positive-thinking wife had
reserved a spot for me right by the front steps, so I’d brought with me Philip
Roth’s mesmerising Exit Ghost for that leisurely ten minutes in the
parked car while waiting for the train to come in. But the constant circulation
of cars forced me into the back streets. I made the platform just in time to
see the illuminated train snaking in to the station. Bang on time.

It’s never like it is in the films. It’s extremely
difficult to spot an individual among a milling crowd – particularly if you’re
looking one way and they’re busy disembarking from the other. And when that
disembarkee fails to materialise, you start to wonder… No, surely no one could
have spirited her away between Limoges and Brive. Startling me as it always
does, my mobile phone went off in my pocket. Where are you, Papa? I’m
waiting outside. I’d failed in my mission to help my girl down off the
carriage with her heavy bags. Nul pointes.

But it was all right; she wasn’t cross. And isn’t nature
a wonderful thing: how you recognise your own in a crowd, despite a two-month
separation and all those interim physiological changes? Reader, I ask you:
would the North and South Koreans experience such joy of reunification? You
imagine that all the passers-by and lookers-on feel your pride and pleasure. Regarde
cet homme, Philippe. Is that not nice? He has retrieved his daughter. Whereas,
of course, they’d have been far too busy with their own reunifications even to
notice.

Mother and child reunion (at the Jean Lurcat Museum)

So all that remained was to deliver the girl safely back
home to her mother for a late-night curry and a warm welcome from the animals
that we humans like to imagine will have missed her more than their grunts
could say. It’s easy to let your guard down when there’s so much chatter to share,
but I scanned the road home doggedly for oncoming madmen and nocturnal animals
likely at any second to rush headlong for the opposite side of the road. I’m
happy to announce that we made it safely without incident. Her thoughtful
mother left a welcoming light on outside and our old dog came running to greet
the new arrival with his tail gyrating like the propeller of a light aircraft.

Self-portrait with modelling clay

The God of Work in his or her almighty wisdom has granted
me a few days’ hiatus in which to catch up with our homecoming queen. A bit of
precious time, before pressing my nose once more to the grindstone, to languish
over meals and pore over her portfolio of work. I am already sharing my
workspace upstairs with Hortense, her dressmaker’s dummy, who is sporting a
fabulous coat that she is working on with a colleague from Peru. Within 24
hours the contents of her mighty suitcase have been removed and scattered
hither and thither. Our space has been invaded and the place is a mess. But who
cares?

The kid’s delighted to be home and her parents’ matching
cups of joy are brimming over. We’re already revelling in her growing
self-assuredness and a burgeoning wit that’s fuelled by her outsider’s
perspective in a foreign capital. We’re discussing plans for next year on the
assumption that she will be invited back to complete the course. And exploring
ways of maximising her limited space in her landlady’s apartment, so she can
spread out a little and create yet more mess.

It’s good to have our girl back. For an entire
fortnight. I am whole once more. It fills me with pride to see how happy she
still can be in the company of her aging p’s, though it makes me a
little sad that I didn’t make more of an effort when I was her age. Ah, youth,
wherefore art thou?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Camp Street

About Me

Born in London, raised in Belfast, further-educated at Exeter and Sussex universities, I'm a professional dilettante, a family man and tireless dog-walker. You can listen to Lost & Found, my monthly radio show on www.expatsradio.com and check out my author page on Amazon.